The Tidewater Railway, also known as the Tidewater Railway Company, was formed in 1904 as an intrastate

railroad Rail transport (also known as train transport) is a means of transport using wheeled vehicles running in railway track, tracks, which usually consist of two parallel steel railway track, rails. Rail transport is one of the two primary means of ...

Virginia Virginia, officially the Commonwealth of Virginia, is a U.S. state, state in the Southeastern United States, Southeastern and Mid-Atlantic (United States), Mid-Atlantic regions of the United States between the East Coast of the United States ...

, in the

United States The United States of America (USA), also known as the United States (U.S.) or America, is a country primarily located in North America. It is a federal republic of 50 U.S. state, states and a federal capital district, Washington, D.C. The 48 ...

, by

William N. Page William Nelson Page (January 6, 1854 – March 7, 1932) was an American civil engineer and industrialist. He was active in the Virginias following the U.S. Civil War. Page was widely known as a metallurgical expert by other industry leaders ...

, a

civil engineer A civil engineer is a person who practices civil engineering – the application of planning, designing, constructing, maintaining, and operating infrastructure while protecting the public and environmental health, as well as improving existing i ...

and

entrepreneur Entrepreneurship is the creation or extraction of economic value in ways that generally entail beyond the minimal amount of risk (assumed by a traditional business), and potentially involving values besides simply economic ones. An entreprene ...

, and his silent partner,

millionaire A millionaire is an individual whose net worth or wealth is equal to or exceeds one million units of currency. Depending on the currency, a certain level of prestige is associated with being a millionaire. Many national currencies have, or ...

industrialist A business magnate, also known as an industrialist or tycoon, is a person who is a powerful entrepreneur and investor who controls, through personal enterprise ownership or a dominant shareholding position, a firm or industry whose goods or ser ...

Henry Huttleston Rogers Henry Huttleston Rogers (January 29, 1840 – May 19, 1909) was an American industrialist and financier. He made his fortune in the oil refining business, becoming a leader at Standard Oil. He also played a major role in numerous corporations a ...

Standard Oil Standard Oil Company was a Trust (business), corporate trust in the petroleum industry that existed from 1882 to 1911. The origins of the trust lay in the operations of the Standard Oil of Ohio, Standard Oil Company (Ohio), which had been founde ...

fame. It was put together with the intention of creating an outlet to

Hampton Roads Hampton Roads is a body of water in the United States that serves as a wide channel for the James River, James, Nansemond River, Nansemond, and Elizabeth River (Virginia), Elizabeth rivers between Old Point Comfort and Sewell's Point near whe ...

, where coal mined along their older West Virginia short-line railroad, the

Deepwater Railway The Deepwater Railway was an intrastate short line railroad located in West Virginia in the United States which operated from 1898 to 1907. William N. Page, a civil engineer and entrepreneur, had begun a small logging railroad in Fayette County, W ...

, could be exported. In 1906, Thomas Davis Ranson served as vice president. In 1907, the Tidewater Railway was renamed the "

Virginian Railway The Virginian Railway was a Class I railroad located in Virginia and West Virginia in the United States. The VGN was created to transport high quality "smokeless" bituminous coal from southern West Virginia to port at Hampton Roads. History ...

". A short time later, the Virginian Railway acquired its sister, the

. Before the Tidewater division of the Virginian was linked to the Deepwater line, it played an important role, in conjunction with the regional Norfolk and Southern Railway, in transporting thousands of people to the

Jamestown Exposition The Jamestown Exposition, also known as the Jamestown Ter-Centennial Exposition of 1907, was one of the many world's fairs and expositions that were popular in the United States in the early part of the 20th century. Commemorating the 300th anni ...

of 1907, an event marking the three-hundredth anniversary of the founding of the British colony at Jamestown. It took two years to complete, but in 1909, both portions (the Tidewater portion and the Deepwater portion) were finally completed, and coal exports, from a new

coal pier A coal pier is a transloading facility designed for the transfer of coal between rail and ship. The typical facility for loading ships consists of a holding area and a system of conveyors for transferring the coal to dockside and loading it into ...

Sewell's Point Sewells Point is a peninsula of land in the independent city of Norfolk, Virginia in the United States, located at the mouth of the salt-water port of Hampton Roads. Sewells Point is bordered by water on three sides, with Willoughby Bay to t ...

, began. In 1959, the

was merged with the

Norfolk and Western Railway The Norfolk and Western Railway , commonly called the N&W, was a US class I railroad, formed by more than 200 railroad mergers between 1838 and 1982. It was headquartered in Roanoke, Virginia, for most of its existence. Its motto was "Precisio ...

. This was the first major U.S. railroad merger of the last half of the twentieth century, an era of rampant mergers, acquisitions, and consolidations among the American railroads.

References

External links

Virginia Railway
at Princeton Railroad Museum {{DEFAULTSORT:Tidewater Railway Defunct Virginia railroads Predecessors of the Virginian Railway Railway companies established in 1904 Railway companies disestablished in 1907